Avoid judiciary in trimming fed spending

Our federal government is like a three-legged bar stool. The kind a friendly drunk would use to belly up to the bar. And at the bar, he can't control his wild spending habits, buying drinks for everyone — even paying IOUs when he runs out of cash.
Let's take a look at the stool. Imagine its three legs are like the three branches of our federal government: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. By the way, if you didn't know those were the names of the three branches of our government, don't feel too bad. Well, actually you should feel rotten about that, since those three branches are the very genius of our Founding Fathers. What I mean is that you have a lot of company if you didn't know those three branches. More Americans can name The Three Stooges than the three branches of our government — by a wide margin.
Now, let's take a look at our friendly drunk's household budget. In his sober moments, he earns $40,000 a year. On one of his wild vacations he drank away, he spent $4,000 (10% of his salary) on a jalopy that got him to his favorite vacation spot; $400 on two nights at a fancy hotel for him and his wife (1% of his salary); $40 for a dinner for him and his wife (0.1% of his salary); and $4 tipping the valet who parks his jalopy (0.01% of his salary).
After he sobers up, our friend takes stock of his vacation binge. He totals up $4,444 plus the dollars he drank away.
If we told him to straighten up and fly right, we probably wouldn't point to the $40 he spent at the restaurant or the $4 on his valet parking. We might instead say to him that he blew too much dough on his liquid refreshment, his hotel room and his jalopy.
Congress is our friendly drunk who is sobering up. Problem is, in analyzing where its spending habits fell off the tracks, it is looking at the cost of the dinner and the valet parking instead of the costs that really mean something. And it is doing so by weakening the bar stool — our federal government — by weakening one of its three legs.
In the latest budget discussions in this supercharged post-election season, some in Congress want to reduce the budget of our judiciary. If no action is taken, our federal judiciary's budget will be reduced in the New Year by roughly $600 million.
Let there be no mistake — that's a heck of a lot of money. But if you love this country and you think the genius of our Founding Fathers was indeed that, then you have to make sure you spend enough cash to keep that genius running.
The entire judiciary's budget — I mean the whole thing, from the person who empties the waste baskets at our gorgeous Carl B. Stokes U.S. Courthouse to Chief Justice John Roberts' salary — is under $8 billion. That's a heck of a lot of money. But in terms of our entire federal budget, it doesn't even amount to 0.2%.
That's right — not even one measly percentage point. Heck, not even a half of a measly percentage point. And Congress now wants to reduce that further by slightly more than a half-billion dollars. That means that despite 83 vacancies in our federal court system, we are telling our federal courts — that important third leg of our bar stool — they may need to fire people and cut budgets even further.
The impacts are very real for all of us. Court officials across the country predict, for example, the temporary suspension of federal civil jury trials, the furloughing of federal court and probation employees, and a reduction in federal court security officers.
If you're not a litigant in federal court, lucky you. But your employer or others on whom you depend might be. And regardless, justice delayed is justice denied.
The furloughing of employees who supervise ex-offenders when they come out of prison affects all of our communities. And I have never heard anyone suggest our courthouses are so safe we should reduce security in them. Oh, and for those who live in the western part of the state, sequestration will likely translate into further delays in the construction of the much-needed federal courthouse in your community.
Spending on our third branch of government is like our fellow's expenditure on dinner and the valet parking. Congress should be looking at the 99.8% of the federal budget rather than dithering with the 0.2% that represents the entire funding of one-third of our government.
Take away the third leg of the bar stool, and our friendly drunk quickly finds himself on the floor. I don't want to see our government fail.
(Dennis Terez is federal public defender for the Northern District of Ohio.)